Tuesday, October 30, 2007

I just sent this e-mail out to my friends. I'm too lazy (high on pain pills) to write a real story for my blog. The irony is that I wrote to whine about coffee, finished my coffee, then... you'll see.

ok, so you probably know me well enough to know that i'm a fabulous klutz. really, i like to refine it to an art form, which i will demonstrate to you now.

monday was one of my days off. i was leisurely drinking coffee, finished a novel i was reading, and i was getting ready to take a shower. i decided to finish one last tiny little art project before i got in the shower. just one last thing. i went upstairs to get the accessory i needed, and then i went back downstairs to finish the project.

except i didn't descend the staircase properly.

somewhere around stair two or three, i lost my balance or slipped or something and went careening toward the floor. it all happened so fast, i can't even tell you the cause or how it happened or where i landed. what i can tell you is that i broke my leg.

yep. i told you i'd take clumsiness to a new level, didn't i?

it turns out i broke my tibia, which it turns out is the load bearing bone in the ankle, so i can't put even the wee tiniest pressure on my foot. i was told by the orthopedic (bone doctor guy, however you spell it), that i was quite lucky. the break was millimeters away from requiring extensive reconstructive surgery. so i guess in all my bad luck, i've got some good luck in there somewhere too.

i am manditorily off work for a week. i have been temporarily confined to the second floor of our house for that week because the bathroom is upstairs and i'm REALLY bad at crutches. plus i just shouldn't move and all that stuff.

so i have my crutches to limp around on, and my health insurance bought me a walker, so all in all i'm doing ok. the only problem is getting back to work. my weekend job isn't very hard, but my weekday job is in a tiny cramped office, and i don't see how i can work on any of my projects there.

i would also really like to shower, but it's going to be a two person thing, involving garbage bags and duct tape.

matthew's being a saint. i feel terrible, like i'm taking advantage of him, but, i just can't move without terrible pain.

oh yeah, you probably want to know if it hurts. yes, it does. i know that there are worse pains in the world and worse broken bones, but i'm in pain. i don't really know how to describe it, except that it feels like i broke my tibia near the ankle. and that's what it is.

the best part of the story: for some reason they fast-tracked me in the emergency room. i didn't have to sit in my courtesy wheelchair and wait forever while sniffling people went ahead of me. it went fast for emergency room treatment. my actual dr. was a jerk though. he was like "you broke your tibia. we don't put on casts here. you have to make an appointment with one of these doctors to get a cast. good luck." everyone else was super nice though, so he was just balancing them out i guess.

and to conclude, they gave me very few very weak pain pills, so i'm depressed about what i'm gonna do when the pills run out. my leg had better feel less painful by then!

finally, i'm writing this on pain medication, so i hope it makes sense and there aren't too many typos.

send me air hugs and love. and pray that i don't get bedsores since only one position is comfortable!

Monday, October 29, 2007

I'm so unmotivated today that I can't even make coffee, even though that's the only thing that will cure me.

I had a really bad experience with my new St. Augustine psychiatrist. He basically accused me of being a drug addict in the lobby of his practice. Re-read that sentence and think about how unprofessional that is.

I've been depressed since moving to Florida (please insert no jokes, I really do love it here), so I went to a psychiatrist for psychiatric help. I only sort of got help. Most of what I got was fear and shame, and I'm terrified to go back to him if he's going to keep violating HIPAA laws and yell at me in his lobby about my legally prescribed medication.

I haven't slept well since seeing him. When he decided what medication I should have, I was too afraid to contradict him, even though it was contrary to my current medical regimen. It's just not the right medicine, and now I can't sleep.

I'm miserable from the no sleep and the medication, and I'm miserable from the way he treated me, but I don't see an easy solution. I called him and left him a voice mail where I admitted to being afraid of him and that it was the wrong medication, but what will he say? What will he do? Will he yell at me for being a drug addict again and then make fun of me to his staff?

I'm working on getting a new doctor, but somehow I foresee a commute to Jacksonville in my near future. Supposedly scary unprofessional guy is the best game in town.

As a slightly related aside, I dreamt I was in Chicago this morning as I woke up. I woke thinking, "I'll go to the store and buy some Fred Soll's incense, and that will make me happy." Then it dawned on me that I was in St. Augustine and I'd have to order Fred Soll's off the internet.

It's the weird things like that that make me miss Chicago. Not the beautiful skyscrapers, not the green river, not my wonderful old neighborhood. It's incense and that shop in China Town where you can eat Lotus Cakes. It's Whole Foods house brand soy milk and almond butter. It's walking to my psychiatrist's office after work where I was treated kindly and professionally. They add up, the little odd moments that I took for granted.

St. Augustine may be it's own paradise, but its charm doesn't get me almond butter.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Loki Cat loves black things and luggage. Black things make perfect sense: he's a black cat, and when he nestles into his black nest, he's pretty much invisible until he deigns to turn and meet your eyes. I'll tell ya, nothing will scare you quite as much as a black cat in a dark corner laying on that black t-shirt you threw on the floor when he turns and gives you the "what now, human?" evil eye gaze. Makes me jump outta my skin every time. Right now, the cat's favorite black thing is a vinyl bookbag/purse I left on the floor accidentlly. He has conquered it as his own.

But the real draw for Loki Cat is luggage. Man that cat loves a good suitcase. You leave your suitcase unattended for five minutes, and he is either in it or on it. You think that suitcase was put away, but it turned out that the cat could get into the closet, and when you withdrew the suitcase, it was covered in fine, black fuzz. The black cat struck again.

Out of some misguided animal (enabling) generosity, I've left the cat a few treats. I didn't put away that black vinyl purse so he could have it to lay on, even though I don't quite see the draw. And I didn't put away my suitcase after the last time I used it so that he could have a nice bed nest to sleep on.

I don't know why I'm such a sucker for that cat, but he just hits me in the right spot in my heart. I don't want my black purse covered in fur, and I don't want to have to vacuum my suitcase the next time I need to use it. But, there you have it, the cat has possession of both.

I’ve confessed to loving romance novels in the past. I love to be transported to a place where all the men have handsome, deep eyes like liquid amber pools in which the perfectly manicured heroine finds herself drowning. It’s fun. Good, mindless fun. And besides, having a Masters degree in literature, I’ve read more serious fiction than most would in a lifetime. Not bragging, just saying is all.

Enter the lush promise of the romance novel. I am promised to be transported to a place of perfect imperfection, where quirks are charming, and no one has as many nervous tics as David Sedaris. Women inherit dilapidated country homes from great aunts and their amazingly handsome and strong neighbor turns out to be a talented carpenter, willing to work for free for the promise of just one, perfect, rosebud kiss. Robust business men who always seem to have time to workout but never time to look for love suddenly discover that the woman who volunteers at his pet charity is a blossom waiting to be plucked by his dappled gray eyes.

Until God comes along.

Walking the dog the other morning, I discovered a box of books set out on the curb. “Score! Free books!” I shouted, really hoping no one would notice me in my dog-walking outfit, yelling to myself. I rooted through the books, and they were his and hers. Half the books were Michael Crichton and his ilk, and the other half were florid pink-covered romance novels. Pay dirt.

I picked the pinkest cover to read first, The Healing Season. It promised to be a period piece set in London around 1815, involving a scandalous stage actress and a staid surgeon. Very inviting. I read and read, waiting for the love connection to blossom, but they always missed each other at every turn. As I got near the end of the book I realized two things: 1. I’d gone too far to quit; 2. This was unrequited love. A person—a normal person—does not read a romance novel for unrequited love. I railed against the heavens that I had been so abused.

And then I discovered the real plot. The doctor developed an inoperable brain tumor; the actress entered a brutal arrangement with a man who promised to get her headline roles in London’s respectable theater. Prayer—PRAYER!—saved them both. Through the power of prayer, the brain tumor healed itself, after the protagonist found himself filled with the Holy Spirit. Escaping her torturer, the stage actress was taken in by a religious mission, and she too found redemption in Jesus’ love. Thus, the two were redeemed and made whole by God, suddenly on the last page of the novel, able to wed chastely and wholly in the eyes of the Church.

Boring! No bodice ripping there. In fact, that was the exact opposite of bodice ripping, I’d say.

OK. On to garbage book two. Trouble in Paradise. “Is this a religious title?” I wondered. But the dust jacket assured me it involved a bohemian artist who moved to the country to write fiction who swoons to her cowboy neighbor, ensnared by his limpid brown eyes. Lied to again! Regarding our authoress, on page 21, “For months, she’d felt God calling to her to put her faith into words on paper, to tell stories that would exemplify God’s power over evil.”

Who is this cruel trickster who brought me tantalizing promises of morality abandoned for love, but instead delivered love abandoned for morality? How could they do this to me?

I’m going to offer the books to my sister’s church. After that, back to the trash. At least The Healing Season was well-written, but it left me bitter that no women’s garments were rendered asunder in fits of passion. Ah well. I guess I need to visit the “morally bankrupt” section of the bookstore.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

I know I keep harping on this, but it's been the biggest change on my mind lately. More on the dreads.

I love America's Next Top Model. There's always the bitchy one, there's always the clueless one who's so beautiful she rocks without trying, there's the one that *could* be talented but just isn't, there's the one with the bad attitude, there's the one that has *too* good an attitude. Love it. The drama of these personality clashes--a bunch of girls locked together in a house for weeks--rules. Girls, bring your cattiness, your slumber party, your artificial alliances against your enemies, and, most of all, be ready for bare knuckles boxing.

Then there's the makeover episode. Every girl gets a new look. Some are excited and feel honored to be styled by what's-his-name Pavel, and then there are the girls who think they look fierce just how they are... and then, there's the girls who HATE what happens to their heads and fight it. They never look good and they can't recover from the ego blow because they never learn to live with their hair.

With the response I got from some people who are nameless, I felt like the girl who couldn't learn to live with her hair. I felt like my ego was damaged, and I couldn't help but be disppointed at how ugly I was when I saw the look of disdain in their eyes.

But their eyes aren't my mirror now. I'm not sure how many days it's been since I got the dreads, but, you know, they're my dreads and they're what I wanted. I chose this. Pavel didn't choose this for me, I did.

And now I feel great ownership of my head. This is what I look like. I'm nappy headed. People may not like it as much as I do, but it's my hair and I'm wearing it. I haven't been using scarves to hide it, and I haven't been using rubber bands to tame it. I've been letting them fly, free. And as conflicted as I feel about my self-image and my need to be accepted by others, for now, I feel great being me and letting my hair be itself. We're going to get through our awkward growing in stage together, and we'll make it, I swear.

As Tyra Banks would say, "You need to own your new look."

PS Someone on Team Christine just said my hair looked like "nascent dreadlocks." Perfect description.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

For the past four days, my dreadlocks have made me kinda grumpy. They didn’t hatch as glorious and beautiful as I had imagined. I guess that dreadlocking takes time. I’m not really the queen of beauty patience, which puts my endeavor into a pretty questionable no-man’s land. Buyer’s remorse? Or commit?

Today, the answer is commit. I came to work without a headwrap, looking scraggly and ragamuffinly, and I was proud. I am taking a chance, and, maybe it won’t work, but I’m willing to step out there and see what happens.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

I picked up Herbert Asbury's 1927 novel "The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld" through interlibrary loan. I have until Nov. 30 to finish reading this book and return it, as there are no renewals on ILL.

I'm dying. This book is killing me, not like the Bowery B'hoys would have, but, slowly, from boredom and tediousness.

The novel is written in that affected post-Victorian way of bad travellogues. And, really, that's what it is, a travellogue through the underworld of New York.

Books of this period were meant to be read slowly, in the evening, by gas light (if one was lucky, right?), after one's day of terrible toiling. I sympathize with those hoistoric readers, because I am certianly toiling terribly over this novel. I can stomach about ten pages before I become so numb that I have to put it down again to go read fashion slams on Go Fug Yourself.

After having the book for two or three weeks, I've read 68 pages of 373. How am I ever going to get through this thing on time? I'm going to have to buy it online or something, because this is one tome calculated to kill--with tediousness!

Supposedly, Asbury based the book on facts, but claims it is a novel meant for entertainment, and fails to cite any of his source material. He claims it is real crime in one breath, and claims it is fictional in the next. Either way, he's killing me dead.

The novel drags, moving non-linearly from character to character, out of time sequence totally, randomly mentioning at odd times tidbits about the histories of the Fifth and Fourth Wards and Five Points gangs. This could be a good book. Loitering in the musty underground passageway of this book is an actually interesting, entertaining, and informative piece of work. I guess that's what Martin Scorcese tried to do with Asbury's jumble, but I haven't actually seen the movie to know for sure.

No matter the hidden gem in this novel, I don't foresee finishing the book in time for the ILL deadline. See? I'm even blogging rather than read this damn book. Time to go back, back to the Daybreak Boys at Slaughterhouse Point, I guess.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

I’ve been wanting dreadlocks for a while. I decided that when we moved to Florida, I would assess my job situation, then go for professionally upgraded hair. Matthew and I discussed it, and he felt that not only would it enhance my already high cuteness factor, but that I also have the type of job where I get to be eccentric and it’s cute (god bless being the only archivist on campus). I told my library work friend about my plan, and she went a little bananas. “Dreadlocks are disgusting. They’re dirty. You know you can’t wash your hair, right? There’s parasite in Florida that you don’t know about. You could get infected.” She then showed me a picture of her daughter at approximately age 12 with the rattiest looking dreadlocks I’ve seen since my hippie days. “See how bad it looks?”

What happens to Christine when she hears “No”? Her brain turns it into “I’m doing it right NOW, sucka foo!!!”

I like this library chick, and her daughter’s cool, but there are a couple of things working in my favor that didn’t seem to happen for her daughter. I’m having my dreads professionally done. I know that you can wash them and that they don’t have to be dirty. I know that they don’t have to be ratty and that they can be smooth and kinda classy lassy, just like me. I know that one doesn’t need to worry about Florida parasites if one is clean. Eww.

The earliest date I can get my dreadlocks is Saturday night, though. I’ve been waiting a week! How can I stand the burning pressure of the need for defiance? And guess who’s going to be the first person at work to see my dreads… the anti-dread friend. I’m so excited and eager that I actually dreamt about it this morning. I don’t remember the dream, just that there were dreadlocks and I was happy. This is one thing I’m not doing just to be contrary, she just happened to accelerate the plan.

I also just realized that I wasn’t going to tell my family, and if they *actually* read my blog (doubtful), they’ll know my secret… The perk of living so far from home is that it’s easier to keep secrets.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

We have roaches. There, I've said it. It's felt like a shameful secret, so I didn't want to admit it to anyone. But, we got roaches.

They came with the house, and we kind of figured they would, considering it' a 90-year-old house in the deep south. But these ain't no palmetto bugs. These are some seriously bad-ass mother fuckers. These are roaches that'll knife you for your apple if you don't leave them the core.

We don't leave food out. We don't try to feed the roaches, but, they're here, they live here. We had a fly swatter always on hand when we lived in Kentucky, because for some reason every time we opened the door a fly would come in with us. now we keep the fly swatter on permanent assignment in the kitchen.

Recently, I found a big old granddad prowling, looking for a fight, and I tried to squish him with the washcloth I had. Matthew heard me screaming "Die mother fucker!" and came running. My little washcloth was useless, and not matter how hard I squished, he just got up and walked away. Matthew grabbed the fly-swatter and said, "Stand back." He squished that thing dead like a pro.

My name is Christine Wy, and I have roaches. But man, Team Wy kills 'em every chance we get.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Oh, and by the way, this is how I really feel: kudos to you, Al Gore. You deserve the Peace Prize.

Pundits like to pre-analyze how posterity will view the historicity of political leaders. I won’t gauge George W. Bush. His father may enter the annals as “Father of George W. Bush,” not as a politico in how own right. George W. may come out as “igniter of escalated discord and instability in Middle East,” or, he may surprise us with a full-on “improver of Middle Eastern relations.” Personally, I’m rooting that he’s one of those totally historically forgettable presidents that you just have to memorize because he’s on the list. Only time and Houghton-Mifflin will tell.

Al Gore’s had a hard time getting people to listen to his own new groove after the electoral debacle. He’s talked, and his loyal followers have listened, but, in the U.S. political vacuum, it’s seemed like he was one dog barking into the wind of Republican corporate American flatulence. Gore’s Peace Prize momentarily freed me from the U.S. media bubble, and I realized, with awe, “there’s a whole world out there that pays attention to what smart Americans are doing.”

Thank you, Nobel Committee, for noticing the good in our country. I feel like Miss Kentucky in a beauty pageant where Miss Hawaii is expected to win: surprised and elated that someone noticed--they finally noticed!—that, hey, we’re amazing too, just not in the way you might have expected. I hope history feels that way about Gore, too. I want him recorded in textbooks as "the man the world recognized for changing our minds about the gravity of global warming."

I wonder what Al Gore has nightmares about. Does he dream of losing control of the electoral process, over and over, ad infinitum? Does he wake, sitting upright in bed, fists clenched, gritting his teeth, thinking “Not again!”? Does he dream that he’s lost his clothing on the way to the Supreme Court where he challenges the legality of George W. Bush’s presidency?

I told my friend last week that I never dream about being inappropriately naked. Apparently, I lied. Last thing this morning, I dreamt over and over, rotating scenarios, that I had appeared somewhere important naked. I don’t recall ever having this dream before, but, in disturbing tableaux, I was forced into situations where I must act as arbiter, mediator, or other authority in front of an audience. In the last scenario, I sat behind a diner table, and I tried to scooch down to hide my nudity. It was useless, though, because my moderation of the debate between two warring political factions was being televised, and CNN commentators seemed to be focusing on my inappropriate attire, not on our important progress toward peaceful negotiations.

I’m feeling more Al Gore right now, though, where this waking nightmare is a shameful daylight truth that one tries to escape like the pall of a rain cloud.

I lose at Uno. Over and over, I lose at Uno. Hand after hand gets dealt, and I lose. I don’t remember ever being a winner at Uno, not even as a kid. As a kid, the competition amongst my cousins provided the fun, not the winning. As an adult, I honed a competitive bitterness that spurs me to win.

But I can’t win at Uno.

I feel like Al Gore, making TV appearances about the importance of my new think tank work, winning Nobel Peace Prizes for my advocacy on global warming, but always followed by the acrid taint of “Hey, he’s that guy that lost to a retard in a presidential election. God he must be stupid to lose to a retard!” And, let’s face it, he’s lost credibility. Yeah, we get that everything he says is true, and we know from Futurama that he’s funny, but, I mean, he’s that guy that lost to the retard, right?

Uno, Al Gore, dreams, retards—how’s all this stupid stuff make sense? Uno is a retarded game that children play, yet it’s my living nightmare that I can never win. I grit my teeth and clench my fists: “Not again!” I give up on you, Uno. I won’t challenge any more popular vote versus Electoral College versus disenfranchisement of voters just to lose another hand. You taunt me like a recurring naked-at-the-high-school reunion dream. I get it. You win, Uno. Now, leave me alone and let me start my think tank to rehabilitate women’s rights in the Middle East.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

I’ve felt fat and old-looking for the past couple of years. I felt like, once I started gaining weight, I started looking my age. Few of the women in my family actually look their age, so I felt kind of like a family genetics beauty reject. (Many of the women are overweight, so that makes me feel like part of the club.)

Working on a college campus, I’ve been mistaken for a student more than once. Today I went to the campus coffee shop for my ghetto latte (espresso shots with milk added later from the condiments bar). I pulled out my debit card for my $1.85 drink, and I said to the cashier, “I know this is so sad; I have no cash.”

She said, “Don’t you have any money left on your student ID?”

“Oh no, I’m not a student. I work here.”

She pointed to the food court, “Here?”

“No, in the library.”

“You’re not a student?”

“No, I’m staff.”

“Really?”

“Well, yes,” I said, getting nonplussed by her insistence that I couldn’t be old enough to work here.

Really, though, I was deeply flattered and I even blushed. “OK,” I thought, “maybe I don’t look that fat and old.”

Returning to my post at the weekend reference desk, I settled in with a book and my ghetto latte. A student approached. “Are you a student worker? I need help from a librarian.” High hopes for the look of eternal youth dashed, I assured the young man that I had my MS in Library Science and that I was a “real librarian.”

Turned out he was just a little crass, not stupid, so I didn’t end up totally hating him for the mistake, but the same student ID confusion boosted my ego and shamed me. A hackneyed cliché like “double-edged sword” is regrettably appropriate here. I suppose I should take the blessing of youthful appearance as a compliment, no matter how it’s delivered.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

After all the rain we've had in St. Augustine, and all the standing water that just won't recede, we've had tadpoles swimming around in our little swamps in the middle of streets and teeming in sidewalk sinkholes. Now they've hatched. Riding my scooter today, I chased away throngs of the tiniest little baby frogs, newly emerged from tadpole stage, hopping on their panicked way. I think they're adorable. It almost makes me wish we had a little rain pond in our yard so I could add tiny frogs to our tiny lizard population

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

I had a professor at the University of Kentucky who studied psychological effects of physical spaces on people. I know that sounds weird, but she had a great example:

In your house, a light-bulb burns out. It’s a special light-bulb that you don’t have in the house, plus it’s in a really weird place and you’d need to get out the ladder to change it, and it has one of those glass shades over it that you’d have to unscrew… So you put off changing the light-bulb. You don’t get around to it because it’s complicated and when you’re at home you want things simple. It makes sense; it’s one of those annoying chores you just don’t want to even remember to do.

But then you walk past the light switch. You know the light-bulb is burned out. But you turn on the light switch anyway. Every time you walk past the light switch, no matter how many times you do it, you turn on the light switch. And each time you say to yourself, “Duh! Why am I so stupid? I know the light-bulb is burned out.”

And that’s a psychological effect of a physical space. Your environment, the light switch you use several times a day every day you’ve lived in that house, has conditioned you to respond in a certain way. In this case, you responded by flipping a switch.

At my old job, I needed a set of keys to get into the restroom, and I always had them in my pocket. I worked there for three years, and several times a day five days a week, I would open the bathroom door with my set of keys.

At my new job, I need a set of keys to get into my office, and I always have them in my pocket. As I walk to the bathroom, I reach back into my pocket and get out the key to my office. I hold the key to bathroom door, and my mind somersaults while my brain remembers, “Duh, you don’t need a key to open this bathroom door.”

I’ve never been caught holding my key to an unlocked bathroom door, but I’m embarrassed by it every time. Each time my brain flip-flops, I go back to the old hallway and see the marble floors and the locked mahogany door, until I remember that now I work in an industrial-carpeted building with large public restrooms. I blush, thinking how silly and impractical it is to imagine these bathroom doors locked.

Culture shock from leaving Chicago strikes in even the smallest ways. Like in the keys that lock and unlock my brain.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

I hate mass forward e-mails. One I got required the sender to make a wish and then forward the "special" message to ten people to make it come true. I was a recipient. The addendum to the "special message" said, "Please make sure to forward this to 10 people. I have a VERY special wish I need to come true!" *

What I just received was, "I thought this was cool and I wanted to pass it on." It turned out to be "My Birth Verse," a Bible verse that is supposed to be tailored according to your birthday, as tabulated by a random computer somewhere on the interweb.

And my result....

Genesis 7:5 NIVAnd Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

I write about my non-compliance all the damn time. Really? The Bible thinks I should do all someone commands me to do? Hah! I scoff thee, Genesis. I do the OPPOSITE of all I'm COMMANDED to do! Take that, Lord, I'm coveting all over the place!

*Not to be a total bitch, but it turned out she wanted to get pregnant, and she gave birth to an ADD child with severe anger issues beginning at the tender age of three. Was that what she wished for? Yes, I guess i am a total bitch, but, so what, the Lord told me not to be, so that's what I'm going to do ;)